Re: [Gaim-cabal] Welcome, Evan

[Sean E. <sea...@gm...>]

On 4/28/06, Evan Schoenberg <ev...@dr...> wrote:
> I remember this being an issue a long time ago, and then (from the
> perspective of a complete outsider at the time) it seems to
> disappear.  Has the beast reawoken, did it never really disappear, or
> did some new Incident prompt further action by AOL?

The first time this was an issue was way back before it was even
called Gaim, but called "GTK+ AOL Instant Messenger." Nobody used Gaim
back then, so nobody ever heard about this. Mark renamed it "Gaim,"
and AOL was appeased. Later, they trademarked "AIM," and started
referring to themselves as "AIM," rather than just AOL Instant
Messenger. A few years passed, and they complained about AIM. This is
when Mark sought out help, and it went to Slashdot.

Since then, we've had several sets of lawyers, who all recommend
against discussing any of this publically, which is why everyone
thinks it's gone away. It stays within the cabal. The current status
is that our lawyers have requested that AOL come up with a list of
everything they might object to us doing, with the goal of settling
the issue out-of-court, where we'd change our name in exchange for
getting a carte blanche on reverse engineering their protocol and
enabling people to connect without using their software.

> > This morning, I suggested "Cohort." Please tell me you have some
> > ideas.
> Cohort's pretty good.  What about "Prosody"?

Eh. Better names have been suggested.

> > Oh, and we've decided libgaim will be renamed libpurple.
> I propose we rename it to a symbol which can not be represented in
> UTF-8 and insist on textual reference;s being "the library formerly
> known as libgaim".

Let's do this for Gaim... and then we'll know we've made it when our
symbol makes it into Unicode.

> Fascinating.  What prompted this development?  I note you didn't name
> it the Gaim Corporation or such; is that just because of the
> potential name change or do you intend to reach beyond the existing
> project with it? Something similar should probably done for Adium at
> some point...

It was a combination of two things: a) Right now, AOL isn't
threatening to sue Gaim, but to sue me. That's scary. When I step
down, AOL will try to sue my successor, and none of what I
accomplished will hold over. The goal of imfreedom is to reduce the
liability to individual Gaim developers.

Additionally, people have been wanting to donate money to us forever,
and we've always declined, as we don't have any means to collect this
money, other than an individual collecting the money, paying tax on
it, being trusted with it, etc. This way we can actually take the
money and not pay tax on it, and have it owned specifically by Gaim.

Last year's summer of code was the direct cause of us doing this. We
wanted to accept the $7,500, but didn't want to pay a third of it to
the IRS, so we've used some of that to found the corporation and then
put the rest of it in the bank. The first thing we plan to spend it on
is to hire a graphic designer to revamp some of Gaim's icons. I've
been talking with three such designers so far.

The lawyers recommended that we keep the name as neutral as possible,
in case we have to change names. Seeing as Adium falls under the
category of Instant Messaging Freedom, if you guys would like to
organize with us at all, at least for the purpose of taking your SoC
money without tax, you should let me know, and we can discuss it.

> > Wanna mentor for Gaim projects as well?
> I'd be happy to mentor if a project came in that I'd be qualified to
> mentor for... I've got good familiarity with most of Gaim's code
> base, and with the overall structure, but I'm hardly an expert in any
> particular area.  I'll go ahead and request to be a mentor, and we'll
> play it by ear when applications come in.  Sound good?

I accepted you.